Best Tricky Album Poll

Ooh, haven't heard this in years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_khmSBRpkY8

I really really miss the tapes I used to have of a couple of Tricky shows from early 97. They're the only 2 tapes I miss out of the 1000s I had, and I've never seen the recordings online anywhere. Full of stuff like this, anyway.

For some reason Maxinquaye has never clicked for me but the Vent-Christiansands-Tricky Kid-Bad Dream-Makes Me Wanna Die whammy is the best music of his career rings totally true for me

Thanks to this poll, I've got "For Real" on my iPod. Tricky is the only guy whose wow-I'm-famous ruminations totally fascinate me.

Another PMT vote here. I like Maxinquaye OK, and the cover of Cold Steel was the track that got me to pay attention to Tricky. But I started listening to him after PMT had come out, so I didn't experience Maxinquaye as something unprecedented, and emotionally for me PMT was the more compelling album, even if it has a drowsy stretch in the second half (as many have noticed). Now that Tricky is irrelevant, PMT is the only one I ever listen to. Yes, the first five track sequence is amazing, as is Piano.

There are parts of Vulnerable that I really like, too. As a whole, it's boring, but there was a great EP buried in there.

This thread is very comforting. I thought I was the only person in the world who never got why Maxinquaye was so much better than PMT.

The PMT cover art is truly horrendous.

its nice if you dont actually look at it carefully which is what i did for years.

nice to see so many pmt fans though. does anyone remember the channel 4 docu on tricky? i used to have on audio tape several live tracks from there (i think, though that might have been another concert show on tv, not sure now) that were superb. he made the studio-live transition so well.

Don't know about Channel 4, but the first time I heard Tricky it was a "Sessions on 54th Street" (?) show on PBS. Tricky, Martine, and band, around the time Pre-Millenium Tension came out. On a double bill with Ani Difranco. They did Cold Steel, Christiansands, and I don't remember what else, but I was transfixed. I spent several years chasing trip-hop before that enthusiasm ran out.

I select Maxinquaye partially because I bought it the week it came out due to me loving Tricky on Massive Attack's first album (for some reason, I hadn't heard Protection; probably I was annoyed that Shara Nelson didn't sing everything on it and pointedly ignored it). Hearing "Overcome" for the first time completely blind to "Karmacoma" was an absolutely flooring experience; I knew the song had to be a reinterpretation of shared lyrics but I really wasn't expecting the raw sexual power of that beat. To this day, I think that is one of the lustiest, most carnal songs I own (and I do think "Karmacoma" sounds kind of fussy and silly in comparison).

When the rest of the album continued to get better and better, I was completely hooked. Pre-Millenium Tension is a great album but came nowhere near the impact of Maxinquaye (or Nearly God) on me.

Here's a couple of those West 54th performances mentioned upthread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RVObkXuZ-U&feature=related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBpSJ-Lt94A

if anyone has that shepherds bush concert from 1997 (i googled and apparently it was shown right after the docu) i would be most grateful.

Anyone care to explain me what the chorus of Christiansands means? I get the rest of the song is breaking down a relationship but I have never been able to make sense of the chorus within the context of the song.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I think I like PMT best because it has the same ugly vibe as There's a Riot Goin' On.

I didn't know about that, is there an uglier vibe than "Nearly God?"

It's an ugly (but very great) drug album.

Dan OTM upthread re: the carnality of the beat on "Overcome."

kind of surprised NG isn't getting more love. Poems is ridiculously good.

"I think I like PMT best because it has the same ugly vibe as There's a Riot Goin' On."

tricky doesnt really do dry/wry humour like sly stone though, its just ugliness with occasional bits of beauty.

maxinquaye if only because it's one of the top ten best-sequenced albs of the '90s.

y'all are making me want to revisit pmt for the first time in eons though.

There's a video piece from 2001 by the artist Steve McQueen called "Girls, Tricky" that manages to capture a lot of what is being said about Tricky in this thread by filming him in kaleidoscopic close-up while he lays down studio vocals. It's like he's filmed in surround-sound and all of the tense claustrophobia and sexuality of the music is there translated to video. The vocal performance is also quite controlled for all its seeming unhinged or improvised on the spot. I saw it at the Art Institute in Chicago, but it looks like it's no longer there.

maxinquaye if only because it's one of the top ten best-sequenced albs of the '90s.

This is implied in my previous post but not explicitly stated, so thanks for saying it because I think it's integral to my enjoyment of the album.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

What's the name of the bass player in the Christiansands vid above?

Deluxe Maxinquaye due November 2. Bonus tracks include Alex Reece's fantastic Gary Numan-meets-My Sharona mix of Brand New You're Retro:

DISC 2

She Devil (rough monitor mix)
Ponderosa (Dobies Rub Part One)
Slick 66 (commercial 12)
Overcome (Bungle Mix)
Brand New You’re Retro (Alex Reece mix)
Black Steel (Been Caught Steeling mix)
Aftermath (version 1)
Just For The Hate Of It (rough monitor mix)
Karma Coma (accapella – rough monitor mix)
Black Steel (accapella – rough monitor mix)
Overcome (2009 mix by Tricky & Al Riley)
Hell Is Round The Corner (2009 mix by Tricky & Gareth Bowen)
Black Steel (2009 mix by Tricky, Jose Maria & Kidd Rasta)

Overcome (2009 mix by Tricky & Al Riley)
Hell Is Round The Corner (2009 mix by Tricky & Gareth Bowen)
Black Steel (2009 mix by Tricky, Jose Maria & Kidd Rasta)

^^^^ Know Fear

damn guys this was a good poll!!!!!!!! i never really thought about exactly how much aaamazing stuff peak-tricky put out. like, pmt and maxinquaye are two masterpieces released in consecutive years.

anyways, i just realized today that i prefer pmt. i like its pop sensibility; it's like the nasty vibe of maxinquaye got refined just that little bit. imo nothing on maxinquaye hits the highs of christiansands or makes me wanna die - two basically perfect songs. maxinquaye is almost like the tricky blueprint maybe? like, it all sounds very new, whereas pmt sounds more confident, i think cuz he's trod that turf before.

but man, the tracks at the end of maxinquaye are sneaky good!

p.s. i always thought blowback was underrated. some of the singles, esp the alanis morrisette one (lol) are good!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIH0CSqmo7o

real good

not going to click on that

why?

Wow, Xgau looooooves Tricky:

http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist2.php?id=1624

New single sort of veers into hip house territory and I’m liking its vibe.

Odd how much Xgau rates him kindly. I might use this Sunday to relisten to his full discography. I haven’t paid much attention to his work from the past 20 years or so.

Nor I – I’ve always found most of what I heard following Maxinquaye to be a mess of blown out vocals and tuneless grooves.

One question ... was Martina’s vocal on “Ponderosa” her putting on a Robert Wyatt thing? The accent and lyrics are totally different here and seem like a direct, if left field, reference.

Fall to Pieces sounds quite good. I've also barely heard any post-90s Tricky, but revisiting Pre-Millennium Tension earlier this year inspired "there's no way this artist could have stopped making interesting music!" type thoughts, and this one at least is bearing out the idea.

I've given Pre-Millenial Tension so many chances, because I feel about Maxinquaye the way you feel about PMT. Then again, my problem with PMT is not that it's not interesting, but that it's impenetrable. But I've been thinking about giving it another shot since it's been some years

Nearly God is the one I like the best after Maxinquaye.

I think PMT was just in the air at the right time, growing up (sisters played it, well before I was ready for it on my own).

I think PMT has the same problem that Maxinquaye that it feels frontloaded, but where Maxinquaye still has good moments in its second half, PMT falls apart from Ghetto Youth onwards. It has some interesting ideas but they feel very undercooked to me.

However if you take into consideration that Nearly God and PMT were released in 1996 I don’t feel harsh about both records. They’re not perfect but if you take the best cuts from both into perhaps a 10 track album you honestly get an even better album than Maxinquaye

Also I don’t know what’s the story behind it but the Weekend Mix of She Makes Me Want to Die is the version I was most familiar from and the one I like the best. No idea if it was an official remix, it seems it’s not but I remember it was more popular than the actual album one. I might be misremembering but I think even the music video that they played on mtv had the remix? Last time
I checked on youtube the remix has more views than the original one.

I was the most familiar with*

New one's sorta reminding me of Lisa Germano's No Elephants, another super melancholy album that benefits from somewhat counterintuitive sequencing.

Might as well play god and choose the 10 songs I’d use to make a better 1996 Tricky album:

Vent
Christiansands
Tricky Kid
Bad Dreams
Makes me Wanna Die
Together Now
Poems
I Be The Prophet
Black Coffee
I Sing For You

New album is interesting... a bit all over the place as usual - I agree the counterintuitive sequencing works - and half of it doesn’t have that trademark Tricky sound - not necessarily a bad thing - but it also has some of the best work he has done in years. It sounds like he actually cared about this one and put in the extra time and work before releasing it.

xpost LOL at just replacing the second half of PMT with Nearly God tracks but that is consistent with my recollection of PMT.

I think I'll give Moka's tracklist a shot - never listened to Nearly God anyhow

Nearly God >> PMT

PMT >> Nearly God >> Maxinquay.

Excited to hear the new one.

Maxinquaye is all-time for me, but I've never managed to get into his subsequent material. I doubt I've tried hard enough, though.

PMT was definitely his peak (and the live show, performed in near-total darkness, was stunning). I love that record and nothing he's done since has come close.

I've never heard Nearly God and it's not on Spotify in the US.

I felt at the time that PMT=Nearly God, sort of like two sides of the same coin (a la Achtung and Zooropa, or Laid and Wah Wah). I've never been able to figure out how he could come out of the gate so strong, with three awesome records, and then just sort of ... deflate.

Love PMT, and feel like it's an unrecognised stylistic godfather of the melancholy/dark/emo hip-hop that has come out in recent years.

Tricky Kid one of my favourite 90s tracks by anyone, and one of the most convincing conjurings of the experience of drug-induced paranoia, with those repeated lyrics, overlapping vocals and constant brooding menace.

Agree it does sag in the second half, mainly because Side 1 is so jaw-dropping and impossible to adequately follow. Might have worked better as an EP. Wish there was an official release of the near-darkness live show from that era, would love to watch that.

Nearly God is one of those albums I would like a lot more in isolation but it's so connected to PMT for me that it sometimes feels like an unnecessary coda with the exception of "Tattoo", which is the aural equivalent of being stuffed into a small box and slowly suffocated with a pillow (to be clear, I fucking love it)

I'm ready to dive back in his previous albums too, on the back of the new one, which is great in an understated kind of way.

Ty for that link alphie.

Just found out about this sort of prose poem David Bowie wrote in 1995 for Q magazine about Tricky.

http://www.moon-palace.de/tricky/q95.html

Nearly God his must fully realized project imo

Apparently he has a full chapter of him and bowie in his book, I might need to buy it.

Apparently he has a full chapter of him and bowie in his book, I might need to buy and read that one.

have never once heard someone say "i'm loving PMT, especially the second half." haha. maybe i too should give it a relisten.

The first half of Angels With Dirty Faces is pretty good too, but boy, does that drop off. He really should've kept some of Maxinquaye back for the latter albums.

Started reading the book, it’s a pretty interesting read so far. Tricky comes off as a very tragic figure, starting right off with his mother’s suicide.

He comes off as unnecessarily feisty in some situations and also a bit of a narcissist, but he’s also pretty self-aware about his music and knows his discography is filled with dead ends and experimental failures.

I’m only 1/5 in but would definitely recommend for fans of Tricky and the music industry in the 90s.

Nearly God's oppressive whispering sound is fairly prescient of the whole ASMR/electronic pop sound used today.

Yes!

But I always think both Nearly God and PMT feel *remarkably* current, like insanely so. I remember a day around 2019 where I played nothing but those and Yves Tumor and it all connected.

coke in your nose

I’m repeating myself but “Nearly God” has “Poems” which might just be the best track Tricky has ever made.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Wednesday, October 14, 2020 12:17 AM

otm

Both of those songs were remarkably top 30 hits here. Purely fanbase-driven sales but still, what clout.

PMT would have been my answer for the poll. One of my 100 favourite albums ever by anyone I think

Maxinquaye was kind of understated, but felt like an earthquake at the time, and Pre-Millennium Tension and Nearly God built on that sound. All of them are great albums